As is well known to all hunters and trap shooters, the continued shooting of shotguns and rifles leads to chafing and bruising of the cheek. This is particularly true in trap shooting with shotguns, where several hundred rounds may be fired by a single marksman in a single day.
As a result, the marksman tends to flinch with each shot, with resultant inaccuracy of marksmanship.
This undesired result obtains even with firearms equipped with conventional recoil devices. In the use of such devices, the shoulder piece remains stationary, but the gun stock moves with each shot, causing the unfortunate result outlined above.
It has been proposed, for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,663,877, to associate the substantially stationary shoulder piece of a firearm designed to minimize recoil with a stationary comb piece on the shotgun stock, against which comb piece the marksman rests his cheek. Since the comb piece remains stationary with the shoulder piece, chafing is eliminated.
It is the general purpose of the present invention to provide such an assembly of improved efficiency and simplified construction.
It is a particular purpose of the present invention to provide such an assembly which may be applied efficiently and at minimum cost to recoil-absorbing commercial firearms not so equipped, for example to the Browning shotguns.
The shoulder gun stock assembly of my invention which achieves the foregoing and other objects of the invention comprises, briefly stated, a base portion, a comb piece, and a shoulder piece.
The comb piece may be provided by cutting away the upper portion of the gun stock to provide a truncated base having a contoured upper surface in which the comb piece nests in longitudinally slidable relation.
The upper surface of the base portion is hollowed out to form forward and rearward recesses.
The central area of the base portion is provided with a longitudinal bore generally parallel to and below the recesses.
Recoil damping plunger means is mounted inside the bore and connected to the shoulder piece.
A first slide block is mounted in the rearward recess and connected to the plunger means.
First comb piece support means mount the comb piece to the first slide block.
A second slide block is mounted in the forward portion of the recess.
Second comb piece support means mounts the comb piece to the second slide block.
During shooting, the shoulder piece remains stationary relative to the rearwardly moving gun stock. This drives the plunger means and absorbs the recoil At the same time the comb piece mounted on the two support blocks remains stationary. Bruising and abrasion of the cheek of the marksman thus is avoided.